SIR EN SONG Eleanor Hubbard is an astute artist masquerading as a bon vivant, one who respects Marcel Duchamp as a fellow iconoclast. Whether working in two dimensions or three, Hubbard never fails to display her intoxication with color’s zing, line’s quirks, precarious balance and, perhaps most of all, serendipity. Surprises abound in the inventive imagination of an artist for whom all living creatures play a central role, especially those undervalued, neglected or abandoned. In the midst of the #MeToo movement, a memory suddenly flared up of drawings she had made of child prostitutes nearly four decades ago, then set aside, almost forgotten. In 1982, Hubbard and her husband, Geoffrey White, were driving through Los Angeles using an architecture guidebook. While he was looking for unusual buildings, she was busy sketching palm trees as they whizzed by. Approaching Hollywood Boulevard, traffic slowed and they were suddenly stuck in the middle of a loud, rowdy mob. More than a dozen naked girls, perhaps as young as 11 and no older than 16, were shouting, “Freedom!” Several approached their car, knocking on the window, offering themselves for money. The only one wearing clothes -- an ill-fitting, tattered prom dress -- spotted Hubbard’s drawing materials on the dashboard. “Draw me!” she demanded. Stunned, Hubbard obliged and, flush with adrenalin, drew furiously as the vacant-eyed marcher looked on. Others began to lurch closer, striking provocative poses and screaming at her. One proudly sported a baby blue beret and nothing more. Another stood stock still, repeating, “I’m underwater, I’m underwater.”An agitated redhead complained she was being attacked by flies and bees, but Hubbard detected no pests. Who could argue that these brutally sexualized “Sirens” were not drowning, were not under assault? Back in her hotel room, the unnerved artist continued to work well into the night adding watercolor to these sketches. “Transforming them into art was the only way I could process this experience,” Hubbard says now. At home, she carefully stored the “Sirens” between the pages of a linen-bound portfolio, bought in Paris ten years earlier, a treasured souvenir she had always thought too special to ever use. There they safely stayed until recently re-surfacing to join the present day parade of #MeToo survivors. To reanimate her spur-of-the-moment imagery, Hubbard has recreated the 4.5x4.5-inch original sketches as six-foot, life-size, fully frontal nudes. She drew each figure on a sheet of French archival paper of a different texture -- rough, medium, or smooth – to endow them with personas. She further rescued them from oblivion by composing a mini profile for each girl, reclaiming their lost innocence by naming them after fragrant flowers: Gardenia, Lily, Violet, Peony… While this exhibition illuminates the crisis of child trafficking, it also gives voice to nine far too worldly girls who are not forgotten. The artist intends their images to be confrontational and have substance; by placing the over-scale figures slightly away from the gallery walls, each one casts a shadow. “If they were hung flat against the wall, they would be emotionally inaccessible,” Hubbard says. “To have a shadow is to be real.” Ann Jarmusch Contributor to ARTnews, Arts, Réalités, Town & Country, and other magazines, books and newspapers Sedona, Arizona January 2020
Cover: Detail of Individual SIREN Drawings 2